Bermuda is a country behaving like a start-up, says blockchain billionaire Joseph Lubin.

That is what enticed him to set up two companies here and invest millions in a third.

“We’ve got two companies situated here with more to come,” Mr Lubin, founder and chief executive officer of ConsenSys, told The Royal Gazette yesterday.

“We’re just deeply impressed with the agility, the rapid forward motion — it’s like start-up nation. I know ‘start-up nation’ is what they call Israel, but that’s about fostering a climate for start-ups — this is a nation that’s acting like a start-up and that’s really exciting.

“We hope to add a little bit more to that entrepreneurial start-up ecosystem.”

Mr Lubin was speaking after appearing on stage in a “fireside chat” with David Burt, the Premier, on the topic of blockchain, in a free-to-enter conference at the Hamilton Princess yesterday.

The event, organised by the Bermuda Business Development Agency and ConsenSys, attracted more than 300 people, with all seats filled in the Harbourview Ballroom and many standing.

The audience included interested high-school children, with whom Mr Lubin was happy to chat after the event.

ConsenSys helps to find ways for the business world to leverage the Ethereum blockchain platform. It has about 600 employees spread around the world.

The two ConsenSys start-ups based in Bermuda are Omega One, which has a cryptocurrency trading platform, and Adhara, a blockchain-based payments solutions provider.

Mr Lubin said each company already had about 20 employees. He said he could not forecast how large the ConsenSys operations in Bermuda may become.

“We intend to be here and establish some foundations,” Mr Lubin said. “That involves education and hiring a bunch of people for business development and technical delivery.”

Blockchain was changing how we live, he said, and would reduce intermediation. It would enable people to be custodians of their own money and make insurance agreements between each other, for example. It would also be a powerful tool that could help even small-scale entrepreneurs with a good idea to achieve large-scale success.

“Information is plentiful, expertise is fairly easy to develop individually or within a group,” he said.

“It’s all about the ideas and being creative. You don’t have to move to where the capital is. You don’t have to move to Silicon Valley or the Bay area to be relevant, or to build something that becomes systemically important.”

Mr Lubin has also invested $6.5 million in DrumG, a Bermudian-based start-up providing blockchain-based solutions to some major clients in the financial-services industry, an investment announced yesterday.

Asked why, he said: “Brilliant CEO, an incredibly high-quality team with some great ideas and already some business traction.

“It’s not just an investment, it’s already a very significant partnership and we’re going to be working very closely together on multiple fronts.”

Tim Grant, CEO of DrumG, who moderated yesterday’s “fireside chat” between Mr Lubin and Mr Burt, agreed that the deal was about much more than capital.

“It’s not just money — it’s connecting you to a global group of dedicated people who all want to do the same thing,” Mr Grant said.

“We closed the investment in August but we’ve been working closely with ConsenSys since May and have uncovered better opportunities and made better progress than we would have done without ConsenSys.

“Joe is a visionary and he understands our vision. He’s supporting us which means he’s supporting Bermuda.”

Stafford Lowe, DrumG’s cofounder and chief operating officer, is based in Bermuda, and the company has plans to build its presence here. It also has operations in London, Singapore and New York.

“We were given really good advice by EY that Bermuda was the place to incorporate,” Mr Grant said.

“The next step for us is to build a team around Stafford here. I think the education angle is important. Can we get developer talent in Bermuda? We want to encourage that and nurture it, but we also want to bring them in as we grow.

“As we grow in the next year or two, this is the perfect place to have the back-office, middle-office and finance functions. So over time, I would anticipate that we would have a pretty significant operation here.”

ConsenSys sees enormous potential for how blockchain technology can benefit multiple industries. Its Ujo Music operation, for example, has developed a blockchain-based decentralised database that uses smart contracts to automate royalty payments to musicians, Mr Lubin said.

Supply-chain management, using smart contracts and cryptographic security, is the focus of Viant, another ConsenSys start-up. Mr Lubin said that among Viant’s clientele were the World Food Programme, drugs giant GlaxoSmithKline, an energy supermajor and a major consumer products group.

Jeremy Millar, chief of staff for ConsenSys, said the company was attracting clients who wanted to launch start-ups or to tokenise assets.

“In financial services, they are seeing that the Ethereum blockchain is providing a level of capability and efficiency not available in the incumbent financial system and they are rapidly seeking to adopt the tools that, in part, grew up in the Wild West of cryptocurrencies to make their core businesses more efficient,” he said.